Building, Dwelling, Boning.

JAF already did what we do best – a half-contrite, half-cheeky semi-explanation as to why we haven’t been a-blogging of late – before the previous search term referrals post. And she did a damn good job of it, too.

GUYS! We're legit now. We have Texas on our side.

So in addition to JAF’s watertight defense, I’d just like to add that I, personally, didn’t pepper you with sexy historical stylings because I spent my winter break watching the complete series of Friday Night Lights and making pointless trips to Target in an attempt to escape the death trap that is my house to any victim of feline allergies. I think the reason why I’ve been feeling like my break was not relaxing at all was that I spent it actively trying NOT to get a sinus infection as a result of my untreated cat allergy. Because despite this malady and the fact that cats are the fucking worst pets ever, my family owns one. Basically, picture me curled up kind of fetal-ly in front of my laptop, clutching a box of Kleenex, and having a nice Allegra-Benadryl-generic Sudafed cocktail every four to six hours, crying from the eye irritation and also every time Tim Riggins says “TEXAS FOREVER,” because you know he loves Texas and Dillon and football but you also know that HE knows that he’ll never leave because he’s squandered opportunities but has also had to make up for the fact that he was down for the count to begin with.

But whatever. I’m over it. NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX, SHALL WE?

If you’ve ever spent any amount of time in a college philosophy or English or architecture or gender studies or theology or psychology or pretty much any class in the past twenty years, chances are you’ve heard of Martin Heidegger. He’s considered the greatest philosophical mind of the twentieth century or whatever, wrote a lot about being and the human relationship with time and structure, blah blah blah. Actually, the man’s helped me add a couple pages at least two papers in the past academic year, so I guess I should discuss him with a little more reverence. So thanks for writing “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” I guess, Marty.

Anyway, God knows I respect his insatiable, immoral sexual appetite!

Marty was also moonlighting as a part-time model, but he still had to keep his normal job.

So ol’ Marty was born in rural Germany in the late nineteenth century to super humble, super Catholic parents. He actually wanted to study theology, but apparently he had some sort of heart condition that made it impossible…I call bullshit. I think SOMEONE just wanted to study crazy sexy philosophy instead of boring, dusty, stodgy old Jesus. Anyway, that’s what he did, and by the mid-twenties he was married to a hottie named Elfriede (I mean I don’t really know what she looked like, but with a name like that, she had to have something else going for her), and he was the premiere philosophical scholar in all of the Deutschland, working as a professor and rector (or E-RECTor!) at Frieburg University.

Young Liz doing her very best Ingrid Berman impression. And doing it damn well.

First, there was Elisabeth Blochmann, who had one Jewish parent. Geez, MRG, that seems unnecessary and a little racist or ethnically insensitive or at least just a bit awkward or something. Sure it does. That’s just because I TOTALLY FORGOT TO TELL YOU GUYS THAT MARTY WAS A BIG, BIG, BIG OL’ NAZI SYMPATHIZER. Yeah. So that caused a couple of problems for both he and Liz when the whole Schmolocaust thing started gaining steam. But unlike some of the other Schmazis we’ve written about here at For Shame!, Marty was still a basically decent person at heart. So when things started getting a little…shall we say, dicey, for people of the Jewish persuasion in Germany, Marty wasn’t an asshole. He got Liz and her family the hell outta dodge before it was too late. And he also had a lot of sex with her. He was just really into giving.

And at or around the same time, another woman of the Tribe was letting Marty Heidegg-her (I’m just going to do it the one time, promise). And guess what – you’ve probably heard of her! HANNAH ARENDT ring any bells???!?!?

If you’re anything like me, it sure did, but then you had to go to Wikipedia to remember who she was, and then Pippa Middleton or soap or whatever that was didn’t let you, so you had to wait A WHOLE TWENTY FOUR HOURS to figure out what Hannah did in her life even though there’s a large, well-stocked research library less than five minutes from your apartment.

Anyway, after, like, the longest twenty four hours EVER, I realized and/or was told that Hannah was a badass philosophical bitch here in the ol’ land of the free, best known for studying the dynamics of power and authority……………………..IN BED!!!!!!!!!!1 And in just two words, I’ve trivialized her life’s work. BOOM, nailed it.

Much like Hannah herself was getting nailed by Marty, as Elisabeth before her.

Shit was real between those two. Even Mother Wiki calls their relationship “long, stormy, and romantic,” so it’s gotta be true. We all know THAT COUPLE. The couple that fights all the time. The makeup sex couple, if you will, that stays together merely to breakup, bone, and do it all over again, in a cyclical, sexual, totally fucking annoying dance. Yeah, in my completely valid and verified historical opinion, Hannah and Marty were in it for the makeup sex. They started boning around 1925, and kept on keeping on, cyclically, of course, until 1929, when they had THE FIGHT and Hannah, Independent Woman that she was, said “I don’t need your philosophical brain for my academics or your nonphilosophical dick for my lady needs ANYMORE!” Then she went to Heidelburg, where she went on to write her dissertation of Augustinian concepts of love under the tutelage of Mr. Karl Jaspers, another fancy philosopher. Germany was really churning them out, weren’t they? And as if the academic jealousy this undoubtedly aroused for Marty weren’t enough, HANNA FUCKING GOT MARRIED, too! All in one year. FUCK, those Germans are efficient.

Anyway, Hannah couldn’t escape rumors of her steamy affair with Marty, and his devotion to the Nazi cause a decade later certainly didn’t make things easier for her. By this point she’d moved here and started working for a couple of very active anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler, anti-badguys organizations.

Potentially if you wanted a "real," "scholarly," "researched" account of this fifty-year relationship, you could fucking read this. Potentially.

So it would be totally reasonable to assume that these two fucking hated each other. But here’s the best part – YOU’RE WRONG. That’s not the best part, I mean everyone wants to be right, right? I want you to be right. But you’re just not. The best part is that Hannah and Marty, despite the conflicting nature of their most basic beliefs and ideologies, despite their breakups, despite Hannah’s quickie nuptials, despite Marty’s marriage, legitimately remained friends until Hannah’s death in 1975. Seriously, their letters are published. I’m not mathologist, but by my calculations that’s fifty fucking years. And Marty died a year later. And both of them left this crazy mixed-up world as well-respected leaders of their respective fields. Shit. Hannah and Marty were some highly evolved, highly aroused people.

Now, naturally, I think a tribute to their sexploits is long overdue. So here’s to Marty, who as a Catholic Nazi sympathizer with two documented, high-profile Jewish bangmaids, was either very forward thinking or just really wanted to get laid, and here’s to Hannah, the Jewish bangmaid who was woman enough to remain friends with her ideological foe for half a century. Or who wanted to keep that booty call on the active roster, just in case.

MRG

And special thanks to MRG’s friend and scholar of all things German, KP, for suggesting this scandal.